Impact of communication availability in a demand-side energy management system: Differential game-theoretic approach

Differential games are multi-agent versions of optimal control problems, which have been used for modeling control systems of smart grids. Thus, a differential-game theoretic approach is a promising mathematical framework enabling to discuss a demand-side energy management system where there are multiple decision-making entities. This paper first indicates that the optimal demand-side management of multiple demand-side actors (e.g., consumers, houses, buildings, communities) in a decentralized way is formulated as a differential game. In addition, we point out that an information structure (e.g., open-loop, feedback), that is the most important property of differential games, corresponds to availability of communications. When information shared by communications is available, it enables demand-side actors to act in an appropriate manner, i.e., demand-side actors conduct decentralized feedback control. On the other hand, when shared information is unavailable due to communication failure, demand-side actors do not necessarily give up control and they may use another type of control, such as prediction-based control. For example, demand-side actors are assumed to manage the power consumption to minimize disutility and the electricity rates allocated to the power grid, and to maintain the demand-supply balance by considering a photovoltaic power generation. Numerical analyses demonstrate that the proposed framework enables a trade-off analysis for decentralized controls considering the availability of shared information.